The Grace in Letting Go

2 Corinthians 12:9 My grace is sufficient for you.

We're about a month and a 1/2 away from moving to Brazil. As we come closer and closer to the departure date, God continues to grant me grace beyond measure.

When we 1st felt called to move, my 1st question was, "So are we going to ship ALL of our stuff?", hoping that I could just relocate EVERYTHING in our home. Well, we looked into that, got the quotes, and knew immediately it would be impossible. In the process of selling our home to a friend of ours, we decided mutually that we would sell it with the furniture. Great! Now we don't have to ship the furniture. Well, I knew I still needed to go through the whole house and have a MAJOR garage sale and get rid of everything we didn't need. So I did just that. It was hard selling our treasures. Most everything was brand new, and, or, wedding gifts. So it was a little difficult, but I really felt God's grace upon me to let it all go. (even some great things I didn't even use yet!) Friends of mine kept telling me that what I was doing was so great and honorable, and that they could never do it. I never felt honorable, I just felt like I was following the will of God.

So we sold the house and moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. We had to downsize, but I still had lots of boxes packed to ship directly to Brazil. Even though it was WAY too expensive to ship the whole house, we sold the big furniture and downsized so we thought we'd still ship all of our boxes of household things and Camden's baby furniture and baby gear. SO, we got a quote on our downsized shipment. We were blown away! Even though we cut our shipment down to a 1/3 of what it was, it was still VERY expensive, and didn't cut the price that much.

Well, that means we have to downsize some more. OK. No problem. We just won't take Camden's furniture and a few other larger items. Let's get another quote on about 1,500 lbs. (which is nothing compared to what we started with.) As you can guess. Still too much.

So this past Monday, we've decided to pretty much get rid of EVERYTHING and just move with suitcases. We'll buy everything new when we get there. And the amazing part of all of this, is that I'm not even freaking out about it. I've felt that God's Grace has been on me more and more with each downsize. Even the things I thought I could never leave behind and that I NEEDED when we 1st started this process, don't even mean much to me anymore.

I've always loved the illustration of not holding anything too tightly in the palm of your hand, except Jesus. Always be willing to let go and let God. This has been very difficult for me. I've held plenty of things so tightly my world revolves around them instead of God. It's seems God is teaching me about letting go through this whole process. The grace I've felt through this has been amazing. A year ago, if you'd have told me I'd sell all of my possessions and move to another country with just a few suitcases, I would have never have believed it. Now here I am. Wow! I've never felt so much peace and grace working in my life.

Have you ever learned this lesson of letting go and letting God? I'd love to hear about it!